Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Burqa has no place in Denmark, says PM

The face-covering burqa and niqab veils worn by some Muslim women have no place in Denmark, Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen says, adding his government was considering restricting them.

Rasmussen stopped short, however, of calling for a ban on the veils, noting "legal and other limits".

"The government's position is clear: the burqa and the niqab have no place in Danish society.

They symbolise a view of women and humanity that we totally oppose and that we want to combat in Danish society," Rasmussen told reporters on Tuesday.

Denmark is "an open, democratic society where we look at the person to whom we are talking, whether it's in a classroom or on the job," he said.

"That is why we don't want to see this garment in Danish society," he added.

He said his centre-right government was "discussing ways of limiting the wearing" of the veils without violating the Scandinavian country's constitution.

The prime minister's comments came a day after the publication of a report which showed that use of the burqa was "extremely rare" in Denmark, though no figures were given, and that the niqab was worn by "between 100 and 200" women.

The report was commissioned by the social affairs ministry and written by researchers at the University of Copenhagen.

It follows a heated debate on the burqa that has divided the two-party coalition government since the summer amid pressure from its key parliamentary ally the far-right Danish People's Party.

Some 100,000 Muslim women live in Denmark, representing about 1.9 per cent of Denmark's total population of 5.5 million. Some 0.15 per cent of the Muslim women wear the niqab, according to the report.

Denmark has had tense relations with the Muslim world following the publishing in 2005 of cartoons depicting Islam's Prophet Mohammed that were considered blasphemous and insulting by much of the Islamic world.